A blog about engagement and marketing

How do we measure an emotional attachment?

“…the personality that identifies a product, service or company (name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them) and how it relates to key constituencies: customers, staff, partners, investors etc.”

That personality is the thing that people become emotionally attached to. Yes, people can say they love a product or a service, but often that love comes from the marketing around the brand.

Image via Wikipedia

Social media is a great place to see the emotional attachment. Case in point, this is a person on Twitter talking about an EMA client. This is someone who has an emotional attachment to the brand, and they are showing it off in Twitter.

Consider for a moment, the thought behind this post:

He is posting this picture on purpose to a brand Twitter feed.

The Twitter feed isn’t the name of the restaurant, but he associates the brand with the feed.

It’s a very personal picture.

If there was an advocacy scale, this would be high.

So here’s the question: how do we measure it? Is a testimonial of this level the equivalent of 10000 GRPs? Does it have the same value as a mention in the Charlotte Observer? Does it have more?

While we understand in our hearts that a message like this is marketing awesomeness, we don’t have the language to describe it.

At best, it ends up being a case study on creating deep relationships. But it can’t be a promise. The brand experience has to deliver, and we can’t promise that. What we can promise is to engage. But when people do, we can’t really measure it.

We’re now a couple of years into social media. Brands have Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and interactions with fans. In a couple of years, we’ll be able to tell if being a fan equates with more sales or customers.